England / West Indies

The real story of the West Indies’ dropped chances is just how many England’s batsmen offered

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Another one goes down (via ECB)

It’s like we always say, to take 12,841 wickets, you need to create 15,516 chances. (We should stick that on a T-shirt).

At the time of writing, the second Test between England and the West Indies had seen 12 drops, which is rather more than you’d expect.

The Windies were responsible for seven of those in the first innings alone. Based on the average run value of a ‘chance’ in Test cricket, they could quite reasonably have expected that to cost them 200 runs.

England made 258, which just goes to demonstrate the home team’s impressive commitment to providing chances during that innings.

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7 comments

  3. Cracking test match this. I reckon the West Indies will win from here. They will certainly hope to chase this total down. Eh? Eh? Thank you very much.

    In non-international cricket news, this story caught my eye. It is, of course, shocking behaviour, and will inevitably result in them being deducted two points as a penalty.

    But what I found most interesting was the language used by their hard-done-to opponents. It is a masterpiece of righteous superiority.

    Thinking that Carew would want to beat us the right way and show everyone they are indeed the very best, their choice to declare and deliberately lose was at odds with their title of champions of the county. Some people have asked if we think deliberately losing is match fixing and if we wanted to go down that road. We will leave that up to Pembroke County Cricket Club to decide.

    At every stage it drips with contempt. I reckon it came from a lengthy committee meeting, in which they put forward a statement of what they wanted to say, then gradually modified it so it suggested some aloofness while maintaining the sense of the original. The first sentence, for example, is clearly supposed to read, “Thinking that Carew were not cheating fucking twats…”

  4. Away from Leeds….

    Chanderpaul (95 – that’s how many runs he made, not his age) and Livingstone (169 not out as I type) are ‘doing the business’ at Old Trafford – days like today were tailor made for the former, whilst the clamour for the latter to get a Test chance is just about audible here in Salford.

    Also, Shakib is having a bit of a game against Australia (although probably in a losing cause). I take it that the readership/commentariat here agree that, in terms of ‘matchwinningness’, Shakib > Moeen > other all rounders?

    1. Shakib has 16 five-fors, which among batsmen who average 40+, is extraordinary. The next best is Grieg with 6.

  5. 73.4
    Broad to Roston Chase, 5 runs, luck slowly but steadily shifting in Windies’ favour. Chase opened the bat face and ran a quick single to backward point, Stokes picks up and hurls a wayward throw at the striker’s end. There’s no proper backing up at the mid-wicket area, deep backward square runs all around and puts in the dive. Only to be defeated by a bolt-speed ball

    Amazing.

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